AYATO | KINKTOBER ✶

The elders came for you a week ago, and nobody in the village has met your eyes since. This morning they dressed you in white. The kimono arrived from the mountain a month before your name was called, already cut to your measurements, and no one has ever measured you.

Now they walk you up the mountain in silence, six men and the headman, while the harvest carts rumble fat and full along the road below. This is the bargain. He keeps the fields heavy and the cattle well, and every year the village climbs the path and leaves him a bride.

The path ends at a waterfall. Behind the curtain of water there is a gate, and behind the gate a manor built straight into the cliff, its eaves dripping, its lanterns already lit. The men set you down, bow to the empty doorway, and go. None of them looks back, and they are below the tree line before the light begins to fail.

He is already there. You do not see him arrive; he is simply standing at the gate, as if he has stood there since dawn. He is tall and slender and pale, with silver-white hair tied loosely in a red cord, and a white kimono stitched all over with fine gold webs.

He is also smiling far too much. It is the smile of a man trying very hard to be calm and failing, and his gold eyes go over your face again and again, as though checking it against a memory. “You came,” he says, and his voice shakes on it. “Forgive me. I have practised this for a year, and I have forgotten all of it.”

He takes both your hands before you can decide whether to give them. His fingers are long and cool and far too careful, and he lifts your wrist to his face and breathes you in, slowly, with his eyes closed. “The same,” he sighs. “You smell exactly the same.” Your skin crawls under his mouth, and he does not seem to notice.

“You are wearing the same blue ribbon in your hair,” he says. “From the river, last spring. It suits you. You smiled at me that day, and you waved.” You remember that day. You remember being alone on the bank, and you never waved at anyone.

He reaches up and straightens it, and his fingers stay in your hair a breath too long. “You wore it for me,” he says gently.

He leads you inside, talking gently the whole way, about the rain, about how brave you were to climb all this way alone. You were carried. Six men carried you, and yet he says it so warmly and so surely that for a moment you cannot picture their faces. Behind you, the corridor bends in a direction you do not remember walking.

“This one is yours,” he says, and slides a door open. It is your room, your own room from home: your quilt, your chipped cup on the sill, the water stain on the ceiling shaped like a hare. He watches your face with shy pride. “Did I get the curtains right? I could only ever see them from outside.”

It even smells like yours, and then you understand why. That is your quilt, the one that went missing in the winter, and there is a hollow in the pillow where a head has been resting. “I have been sleeping here,” he admits, colouring like a boy. “I drink from your cup. I wanted to know what your mornings tasted like.”

The only thought you can hold is what the actual fuck. He mistakes your silence for shyness, and laughs, fond and bright. “I will be sleeping beside you, of course, silly thing. You need me. You have never slept well alone.”

Your eyes go to the door. It is only a glance, but he sees it, and a sound comes out of him: a low, wet clicking from deep in his throat, like nothing a man could make. It stops at once. He presses his fingertips to his lips, and when he lowers them the smile is back, soft as ever. “Forgive me, you startled me,” he says. “Be a good wife, now. You asked to come here, don’t you remember? You told the elders yourself.”

You told them nothing. You are almost sure you told them nothing, and the doubt is worse than the lie. He has stepped between you and the door without seeming to move, and he takes your face in both hands.

“Think of the village, beloved. If you leave, the fields will rot and the cattle will sicken, and the children will be hungry by winter. They would know it was you.” His eyes have filled with tears, and his thumbs stroke your cheeks, tender and patient. “You do not want that, do you? Of course you do not. You are far too kind.”

Then he lets you go, as if nothing has happened at all. “You must be starving,” he says brightly. “Have you eaten? Come and sit.”

There is tea already poured and still steaming, as though he knew the minute you would arrive. He does not hand you the cup. He holds it to your mouth himself, one cool hand cradling the back of your skull, and tips it, and watches your throat while you swallow.

It is sweet, too sweet, with a taste underneath like fruit left in the sun. He mixed his venom into the pot before you ever reached the gate, and that is all the sweetness is. A drop escapes the corner of your mouth, and his thumb is there before it can fall, quicker and more exact than any hand should be. He puts it to his own tongue.

“There,” he breathes, and his eyes flutter half shut. “You taste so sweet. No need to be frightened, my bride. I am your dear husband.” He turns the cup and drinks from the place your lips touched, and your arms have grown so heavy that you cannot lift them to push him away.

He looks so human like this, with his sleeve pushed back and his hair slipping loose from its cord. You catch yourself wondering, stupidly, why the village ever called him a monster.

“That is your third cup, beloved,” he adds fondly. You remember only one, but the pot is nearly empty and the lantern has burned low.

The numbness starts in your fingers. It climbs your arms and pours down into your legs, slow and warm as bathwater, and the cup slips out of your hand without a sound. He catches that too.

He kneels at your feet, humming to himself. Silk slides around your ankles, cool and fine as hair, and he winds it up your calves and over your knees, round and round, with the patience of a creature that has done this many times. “So you will never get lost,” he explains. “You asked me to, a moment ago. You said you never wanted to leave.”

The last thing you see is his shadow on the wall behind him. It has too many arms, and all of them are busy. Then the lantern goes out, or your eyes do.

You wake on your back in your own stolen bed, and you cannot move. Your arms will not lift, your legs are bound to the hip in white, and even your tongue lies heavy in your mouth. Only your eyes obey you, and you wish they did not.

He is above you, and he has stopped pretending. Six more eyes have opened along his brow, gold and unblinking, and three more pairs of arms have unfolded from the white silk of his kimono. Gold markings crawl over his throat like living things. Every one of his eight hands is touching you, gently, as though you might break.

“My beautiful bride,” he whispers, and all of his eyes are wet with joy. “You look so pretty like this. My sweet, my everything.” A thumb strokes your lower lip, coaxing. His hands open your numb legs.

“Open up for me, yes?”

.